How to use pom.xml/Maven to initialize a local thoughtsite (App Engine sample) project in Eclipse?

Question

This sample app ("thoughtsite") for App Engine contains a pom.xml in its trunk:

http://code.google.com/p/thoughtsite/source/browse/#svn/trunk

But I don't know what command to run in Maven to set up the project locally. (The README doesn't mention anything about Maven.)

I tried to just import the project code directly into Eclipse but it doesn't look like it's in an appropriate format for a direct import. So I assume I need to do something with Maven to get it set up correctly. I haven't really used Maven before so I'm not sure what command I would need to run to set everything up. The pom.xml seems like it downloads a bunch of dependencies for the project like the Spring jar files which I don't see anywhere else in the svn repository.

Answer 1

First you need to install maven. (Download it, put it somewhere and set the environment variables JAVA_HOME and MAVEN_HOME). Here are some more Installation instructions.

Then either a) install m2eclipse and then import the project using "import existing maven project" you should be up and running.

or, b) on the command line, run mvn eclipse:eclipse from inside the project directory and then just import the project as an existing eclipse project

I prefer m2eclipse because it makes eclipse maven-savvy, but many others prefer to just tell eclipse where stuff is from the outside using the command line